Jenn McKinlay - Due Or Die

“What?” She pulled back and discovered her face was just inches from his.

In the candlelight, his normally bright blue eyes had darkened to a deep navy, and she was momentarily distracted by the heady scent of him, a masculine bay-rum sort of smell, and she lost the thread of the conversation.

“About ten sheds were demolished,” he said. “From what I could tell, a small explosive was used to do the damage. I think whoever did it was counting on the blizzard being blamed.”

“But why?”

Sully shrugged and Lindsey felt his hands slide up and down her back at the movement. She swallowed hard, trying to clear her head.

“The target could be any one of them, but the Friends shed was in the center of the rubble, leading me to think it’s the one that was the object of the break-in.”

Lindsey blinked and tried to focus on his words. Someone had deliberately broken into the storage shed.

“Do the police know?” she asked.

“I haven’t said anything yet. Owen thinks it was the storm and until the police have a chance to check it out, nothing is for sure.”

“We need to find out what was in that shed,” she said.

She glanced up to see if he agreed and found him studying her. His gaze traced her features, and he looked as if he was contemplating kissing her. Lindsey felt her breath stall in her lungs.

In an instant, she knew that she would welcome it, and that she could no longer deny that she had a case of the scorching hots for Mike Sullivan.

He leaned down; she leaned up. They were a breath apart when a door slammed above them, followed by the pounding sound of Converse sneakers bounding down the stairs in their direction.

Lindsey and Sully broke apart. She cupped the back of her neck with a hand and tried to appear casual as Charlie popped into the foyer with them.

“Leaving already?” Charlie asked.

Sully glared at him, looking like he wanted to pick him up and toss him out into the snow. For some reason this made Lindsey feel unaccountably better. She didn’t want to be the only one feeling denied, and she was quite pleased that Sully looked as frustrated as she felt.

Sully looked over at her and said, “Lock the door behind me.”

She gave him a snappy salute, and his mouth curved up in one corner. He opened the door and gave her a scorching look. “We’ll revisit this conversation later.”

BRIAR CREEK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

The door shut behind him and Lindsey stood staring at it until Charlie nudged her.

“Your candle blew out,” he said.

Lindsey couldn’t have disagreed more, but she picked up the smoking wax stub from the windowsill and followed him back into the main room.

Nancy and Carrie were huddled by the fire. No one said as much, but they all started to assume their sleep positions. Somehow, while the storm raged outside, it felt as if there was strength, or at least warmth, in numbers.

Charlie stretched out in his recliner while Lindsey took the other. Heathcliff climbed up with her and Lindsey snuggled him close.

Carrie and Nancy departed to their rooms, and a silence fell over the house, broken only by the whistling wind and the occasional hiss from the gas fire, which Nancy had turned down to blue flicker.

Even though it warmed her from the toes on up, Lindsey decided not to think about Sully or what might have happened in the foyer if Charlie had been just a few minutes later. She wasn’t sure if he had been planning to kiss her or if it was just her own temporary insanity at being that close to an attractive man.

It had been almost a year since she’d left John, and she wasn’t sure she could even read a signal from a man anymore. She had the horrible feeling that she was going to embarrass herself by leaning in to kiss Sully when he was merely trying to tell her she had spinach in her teeth.

She decided to think about what Sully had told her about the warehouse instead. He thought the damage had been deliberate. But why?

The books donated to the Friends were everything from a lifetime collection of National Geographic to an oily repair manual for a Yugo. Why would anyone want to bust into their shed?

Having no answers, her mind wandered back to Markus Rushton’s murder. A rifle shot through a sliding glass door that no one heard; there were so many things wrong with this scenario it was hard to tell where to begin.

Could it have been one of the men he’d recently had an altercation with? It seemed unlikely, but any newspaper in the country reported stories of murder for even less. It was a mystery. One she intended to solve before Carrie became the winner of the most-likely-to-have-shot-him award.

A light awoke Lindsey first thing in the morning. She blinked against the intrusion, and it took her a moment to realize it wasn’t just any light but the lamp beside the chair where she was sleeping. They had electricity!

“Charlie!” she shouted as she bolted upright. “Wake up. We have light!”

“Hunh, what?” Charlie grunted.

“Light and power!” Lindsey repeated.

Nancy and Carrie stumbled from their rooms, looking bewildered.

“What’s happening?” Carrie asked.

“Behold,” Lindsey said. “Light.”

She flicked on all of the nearby light switches, and Nancy clapped her hands together and jumped up and down.

“I’ll start the coffeepot,” she said.

“Shower,” Lindsey said. “I’m going to take a hot shower, plug in my cell phone and reprogram my clocks. I’ll be back.”

She bolted up the stairs with Heathcliff at her heels. It was such a relief to go back into her apartment and be able to turn on the lights, play the radio and know that she wasn’t limited by battery life.

She was towel drying her long blond hair when her phone rang. She was so happy to have her cordless working again that she didn’t bother checking the caller ID.

“Hello,” she answered.

“I’ll be watching you,” the voice on the line said.

“Excuse me,” Lindsey said. She clutched the phone to her ear, concentrating on the caller’s words.

“You heard me. I’ll be watching you, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll do the right thing.”

The caller hung up. The bubble of joy Lindsey had been feeling at listening to NPR popped like a soap bubble.

She knew that voice. She was unlikely to forget that shrill tone anytime soon. It was Batty Bilson.

She settled the receiver in its cradle. Should she call the police? It seemed trivial given all that they had going on. Marjorie hadn’t threatened her exactly, although it sort of felt that way.

No, she wasn’t going to cause a stir over this. She would call her staff and get the library back open, then she would deal with Marjorie Bilson and her cryptic message.

It took Lindsey and Beth the better part of the morning to shovel out the building. Once the walkways were clear and Lindsey felt that patrons and staff could navigate the stairs and enter the building without risking a broken limb, she opened the library. It was a few hours later than usual, but at least they were open.

The book drop was full. When they opened the door to the small room, a tidal wave of books slid into the main room. Lindsey stooped down to pick them up and put them on a cart. The covers were icy-cold to the touch.

Ms. Cole was logging in to her computer at the check-in desk, getting ready to deal with the deluge of books. Once she and Beth had filled a cart, Lindsey wheeled it over to Ms. Cole. She glanced at the check-in screen on Ms. Cole’s monitor and frowned.

“Ms. Cole, you have today’s date as the check-in date,” she said.

“We are checking them in today,” Ms. Cole said.